When the Internet (Over) Reacts

Earlier this month, an unfolding story highlighted how the Internet reacts to news at the speed of thought.

Balloon Boy was (apparently) airborne. The world watched and, as is now common, participated in the ongoing online discussion. On Twitter, we watched 3 or 4 trending topics related to Balloon Boy take hold of the nation. Like an active brain navigating from point to point, these topics jumped sequentially from “Colorado State Police,” to “save balloonboy,” to “FAA balloon safety.” Seconds after the story emerged, Twitter notified us that there were 126 new tweets since we started searching — and 2 seconds later, another 160. A human reader could not possibly keep up with this active chatter. The Internet was receiving commentary about the Balloon Boy event at the speed of a firing neuron.

The analogy of a firing neuron, it turns out, is closer to the truth than most people realize. As Jeff argues in Wired for Thought, Twitter is an optic nerve for the Internet. The Tweeters who were actively reporting were behaving like opinionated receptor cells; the rods and cones of this event. Alone, any single 140 character post was somewhat meaningless — individual tweets tell us very little, much in the way that individual neurons do — but if you could find a way to add them all together you would begin to see a landscape that truly defined this event.

Two weeks later, there is still electricity surrounding Balloon Boy on the Internet. The information has come in from various “receptors,” such as videos from a Today Show interview on Hulu or talk of Balloon Boy Halloween costumes on a popular blog. The combination of this input paints a broad picture but poses a glaring problem: How do we take all of this input and make sense of it?

We believe a new generation of application will arise that will take inputs like these and build knowledge (should we say “experience”?) that transcends the event. By commingling all of this data, the Internet-brain will build a new picture for us, a picture that no one human alone could describe. The collective inputs from billions of sensory cells will create interpretations that are synthesized by a new generation of applications.

Individuals reporting to social networks are educating their friends and followers. Right now, we are looking at this data on a micro basis — and through that lens, it merely seems like a mass distraction. If we are in the Internet equivalent of the Precambrian age, Twitter search on Bing may represent the beginnings of a multi-celled organism. When you go there today, the topic of Balloon Boy is one of the largest tags on the cloud, a mere 2 weeks later. When you look closer you can see recent tweets, links shared within Balloon Boy tweets, links about the physics of flying a balloon, as well as a history of hoaxes and tons of other related information.

As more becomes attached to the Internet, more types of its “sensory receptors” are being powered up across the globe today. There are over 4 billion mobile phones and each one is an input device for the Internet-brain. (A recent study by Synovate found that 82% of Americans never leave home without their mobile phone.) To put this in perspective, the cerebral cortex contains 15 – 33 billion neurons; our 4 billion mobile devices represent a small percentage of the sensory cells that will inform the Internet of the future. But it’s a good start.

Jeffrey M. Stibel is an entrepreneur, a brain scientist, and the author of Wired for Thought: How the Brain Is Shaping the Future of the Internet. He studied business and brain science at MIT Sloan and Brown University, where he was a brain and behavior fellow. Stibel has authored numerous academic and business articles on a variety of subjects and is the named inventor on the US patent for search engine interfaces. He is currently President of Web.com (NASDAQ: WWWW) and serves on academic Boards for Tufts and Brown University, as well as the Board of Directors for a number of public and private companies. Annette Tonti is President and CEO of MoFuse, a fast-growing network of build-it-yourself mobile sites that enables businesses, bloggers and any other web publisher to provide a compelling mobile experience on any mobile device.

Jeffrey M. Stibel is an entrepreneur, a brain scientist, and the author of Wired for Thought: How the Brain Is Shaping the Future of the Internet. He studied business and brain science at MIT Sloan and Brown University, where he was a brain and behavior fellow. Stibel has authored numerous academic and business articles on a variety of subjects and is the named inventor on the US patent for search engine interfaces. He is currently President of Web.com (NASDAQ: WWWW) and serves on academic Boards for Tufts and Brown University, as well as the Board of Directors for a number of public and private companies. Annette Tonti is President and CEO of MoFuse, a fast-growing network of build-it-yourself mobile sites that enables businesses, bloggers and any other web publisher to provide a compelling mobile experience on any mobile device.

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